Before we go full bore into featured films in the coming days, I thought it might be fun to do a rundown of some of the horror and science fiction subgenres. Think of this as a rapid-fire, highly imprecise roll call. While many of these are well known to genre fans, others are admittedly a bit niche. And speaking of niche—there exist quirky little subgenres within subgenres which I won’t detail here in the interest of brevity. Suffice to say we will be having fun with those in the future.

All the Horror

Born more than a century ago with silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), the horror genre is now a massive unwieldy collection of titles likely to make the head spin if one were to attempt to account for it all—and that’s just how I like it!

Let’s dive into the darkness, shall we?

Gothic Horror is one of the oldest horror subgenres with seminal films released in the 1920s and 1930s, with literary source material dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Setting and atmosphere figure heavily here with decaying castles and mansions, graveyards, cobwebs, mist- and fog-covered forests, and deep shadows. These films often feature romantic themes, elements of melodrama, and an overall sense of unease juxtaposed against striking production design. A century and counting, this subgenre is going strong.

Supernatural and Paranormal Horror explores phenomena and entities that cannot be explained by the laws of science as we understand them. On the face of it, that simple definition does not suggest outright horror. But when these elements accentuate dark, mysterious, and often malevolent forces that do not conform to our conception of the natural world, confusion and terror can result. These films often feature ghosts, haunted houses, demons and demonic possession, poltergeists, witchcraft, the occult, and black magic.

Folk Horror draws on local folklore and is often set in rural isolated landscapes, deep woods, or small islands. These films feature insulated and superstitious communities that practice cult rituals ranging from eccentric and anachronistic, to downright murderous. Individuals who run afoul of these groups are in many instances outsiders who are, let’s just say, in over their heads.

Giallo is a rough precursor to the popular slasher craze of the early 1980s. These Italian films often feature murder mystery elements and, in many instances, a black-gloved killer whose identity and motive are not typically revealed until the end of the movie. In Italian, Giallo means “yellow,” which was the color of the paper used in printing many earlier pulp novels that inspired the films. While the subgenre dates back to the 1960s and runs into the 1980s and beyond, the peak period was the 1970s when dozens and dozens of curiously long titled Giallos were released.

Slashers is a subgenre that is a good bit younger than the others but is certainly loaded with titles. Arguably the most straightforward of constructs, slashers often feature a psychopathic killer whose identity remains hidden to the other characters and the audience. In some instances the killer’s motive is only revealed very late in the film. While early slashers like A Bay of Blood (1971), Black Christmas (1974), and especially Halloween (1978) are often regarded as seminal classics, the subgenre is most closely identified with the explosions of releases in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Zombie films generally fall into one of two categories: your voodoo zombies and your cannibal zombies. The former, with its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, featured zombies that functioned as automatons to do the bidding of an evil or misguided overlord. Then comes 1968 and the release of Night of the Living Dead (NLD). NLD is director George Romero’s independent, paradigm-shifting horror film that introduces zombies as ghoulish, flesh-eating corpses with no other purpose than to consume the living. Cannibalistic zombie films would proliferate in the 1970s and 1980s, and here we are in 2024 with the zombie horde showing no sign of slowing.

Psychological Horror is based on psychological and emotional distress, confusion, and those fears lurking in the deeper recesses of our minds. Often, characters in these films and the audiences themselves are unsure if the threats they face are real or imagined. In some instances, this question is never answered, and we are left in a state of unease and ambiguity.

Cosmic Horror features dangers beyond humans’ everyday, pedestrian lives. The fear of something strange, fearsome, and not fully knowable drives this subgenre, which is also referred to as Lovecraftian Horror, named after renowned, if controversial, science, fantasy, and horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. The terror in cosmic horror is of the existential variety, compelling humans to grapple with their relative insignificance in the universe.

Anthology Horror films present a series of strange and eerie tales of the macabre. Most encompass a handful of stand-alone vignettes (typically three-to-five in total) and may also include a wrap-around story that thematically ties things together. These anthologies often include at least one segment that features dark, cheeky, and even playful humor.

Science Fiction

Like our universe, the science fiction genre continues to expand. Science fiction is our creative imagining of humanity reconciling with the implications of new discoveries, technologies, and our understanding of time and space. It’s also about our ability (or inability) to reckon with limitations of life on an earth marred by war, overpopulation, and pollution. These stories imagine humans grappling with themselves when confronting terrestrial or extraterrestrial threats or as we attempt to bend nature to our collective will. While some works of the genre are relatively well grounded in scientific fact others hinge on the flimsiest of explanations to tell the most outlandish, albeit entertaining, stories.

Dystopian films often envision a future where the mass of humanity is severely repressed under some kind of authoritarian rule or suffering in a chaotic, lawless world. These stories are often accompanied by a collapse in earth’s ecosystems and threats to the long-term viability of human life. This is an extremely rich and diverse subgenre, which can be bleak, contemplative, brooding, and darkly funny at times.

Nature’s Revenge, a.k.a. Ecological Horror, and Nature Run Amok films proliferated in the 1970s in the wake of the first Earth Day at the start of that decade. A new environmental movement was born and with it a subgenre of films in which creatures large and small would strike back in direct response to humanity’s poor stewardship of the planet. Insects, reptiles, arachnids, mammals, and mutated creatures would all have their moment to terrorize humans and take them down a peg or two in the process.

Space Operas often feature grand adventures and dramatic interstellar conflicts in space. Futuristic weapons and technologies are showcased in space travel, elaborate battles amongst the stars, and encounters with alien races.

Aliens are frequent flyers in science fiction cinema. One classic trope is the hostile alien invasion popularized in the 1950s whereby aliens look to take over earth, wipe out or otherwise replace humans, and tap into Earth’s resources for the purpose of survival or galactic hegemony. On the other hand, some true standout films in this subgenre present aliens not as hostile but as curious or even friendly towards humanity.

Time Travel was and still is a popular subgenre inspired in large part by H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine, which has seen several film adaptations over the years. These films often feature traveling to various points in the past or future for the purposes of exploration or to forestall a potential threat or danger.

Monsters hold a special place in the hearts of so many genre film fans. The variety feels nearly endless: from classic vampires, werewolves, mummies, and the reanimated, to big bugs and rampaging reptilians; from deadly predators emerging from the ocean depths and creatures hurling in from the farthest reaches of space, to giant beasts born of the atomic age—the “monster movie” genre has it all.

Post-apocalyptic films are set in the wake of earthly calamity brought on by ecological collapse, planet-wide natural disaster, global pandemic, or nuclear war. Some humans simply struggle to survive in these worlds. Others may give into their baser instincts by joining marauding gangs or, on the other end of the spectrum, attempt to rebuild a better world. This subgenre often overlaps with dystopian.

Japanese Imports - Daikaiju Eiga (giant monster movies)/Tokusatsu (Live action, special-effects driven films) are often inseparable from the broader monster category. Giant rubber-suited monsters, miniature sets, and many other creative practical effects exemplified these gems from Japan. Many a monster kid of a certain age grew up watching the exploits of Godzilla, Mothra, Ghidorah, and many other kaijus (Japanese for “strange beast”). These films encompass many elements of classic science fiction and fantasy, such as space travel, alien invasions, and ancient prophesies. Japanese genre cinema has so much to offer, from this subgenre and beyond.

Our journey will be an international and domestic one, with cinematic offerings from Asia, Australia, mainland Europe, Ireland and the U.K., Mexico and South America, the United States, and our neighbors to the north. That said we are going to kick things off a little closer to home.

Next up

We dive into our first featured film, a mid-century genre classic!

The Many Shades of Horror and Science Fiction Cinema

All the Horror

Science Fiction

Vanguard of an Invasion: The Thing from Another World (1951)

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